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I always equated May Day with Eastern European tradition - dancing around the Maypole. I remember that as a child.
ReplyDeleteThey have that in eastern Europe too? I know of it from the British Isles and Germany.
DeleteThe Haymarket Massacre was certainly soft-pedaled in grade-school U.S. history taught in American public schools when I was a kid in the 1950s-early 1960s (in both N.Y. and Fla. schools) -- like most of the major developments in the pursuit of workers' rights, it was scarcely mentioned, and its progeny abroad never were. I never got the connection with the U.S. origins of Europe's May Day observances until I was in college (at a Fla. public univ.).
ReplyDeleteApologies for any errors, as this is totally drawn from memory -- but I must add that the Haymarket Affair mentioned in the red text of the last image above refers to the follow-on events occasioned by the original disruption by plant owners' goons of a peaceful workers' demonstration for better pay and conditions in 1886. Trials against the demonstration organizers (not the goons!) resulted in tragic executions following biased, wrongfully conducted jurisprudence. It was a total victory for the robber barons of the Gilded Age, which was Mark Twain's sneering moniker for the post-Reconstruction economy, when they got free rein from the federal govt. until Teddy Roosevelt became President and finally sat on 'em for their -- and the nation's -- own good, as his cousin Franklin also did a generation later.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note for May Day, remember the profane little cry, "Hooray, hooray -- the First of May! Outdoor fucking begins today!" Have fun, all of you who celebrate the date!
ReplyDeletemark1147 - I like the lighter note.
Delete🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈 May Day!
ReplyDeleteWhat many don't seem to know it that the 40-hour work week was invented at the beginning of the 16th century by the Spanish crown in the Leyes de Burgos of 1512.
ReplyDelete